Sunday, July 11, 2010

{The Hear & Say Centre}

We had our very first visit to the Hear & Say Centre on Friday to meet the team and have our very first lesson! It was daunting yet exciting and Moo did such a terrific job for a little girl who was exhausted from her beach holiday and just wanted to go home to her Daddy.

Our teacher, Michelle is lovely and thankfully Moo was very fond of her! Michelle's family actually live in town so it's a very small world and so nice to have someone who is familiar with our way of life. We sang songs, played with toys and had a great time - all while encouraging Moo to LISTEN rather than watch for the noise. I found that it is also going to take ME some retraining to produce the sound and then the visual, for example - say COW - MOOOOOO. I always show Moo the visual and then talk about it!!

From now on, we will be having all our classes with Michelle via SKYPE once a week. Thanks to Hear & Say's amazing funding, they have provided us with a brand new laptop, webcam and all the facilities to ensure that our lessons will not be disadvantaged due to our isolation! They have also provided us with a box of resources which the lessons will be based around!

We will keep you posted as to how our lessons go. Hopefully with Moo being in her own surroundings, she will really respond to the new noises and sounds. In the meantime, I have to work out how to use Skype and the webcam......should be interesting!

Here is a photo of the Team that we will be working with....

From left - Jackie Brown (Manager of Hear & Say) with Moo, Jane (the lovely lady who organised our Laptop) Michelle (Outreach Co-ordinator) and Michelle (Our Teacher!) - Yes there are THREE Michelle's that work at the Centre!!

And this is Moo in the car after our session - she was fast asleep within minutes. The poor little darling was just exhausted.